The field of the present invention relates generally to data collection and processing and more particularly to the field of Internet resource bookmarking and metadata creation. The invention's utility within the field of public opinion polling is a direct result of transformative effects upon the articles producing bookmarks and web page metadata, therefore the background discussed herein will focus on the history of bookmarking technology.
As the volume of global Internet data and web resources grew exponentially from inception, systems and methods such as search engines and search algorithms were developed that transformed machines that could access and render the Internet, such as computing devices and browsers, into machines that could utilize the Internet by filtering millions of possible resources into small, meaningful, and useful groups of resources. The subsequent development of a “favorites” functionality within browsers marked another generation of transformative technology as machines capable of utilizing the Internet were now able to easily save and instantly re-access the small groups of resources made available through the filtering technology of search engines and algorithms. This new technology is known in the art as the “bookmarking” of resources and is characterized in modern web browsers with simple graphic functions that allow users to save, name, organize, and recall specific Internet uniform resource locators (URLs) from local memory by employing the Internet and common HTTP and HTML naming and rendering schemes.
As bookmarking became ubiquitous, new transformations improved upon prior art, namely web-based bookmarking and social bookmarking websites. Web-based bookmarking allows users to place their bookmarks on a remote server, typically utilizing a registration, username, and password system to provide for global access and manipulation of a user's personal bookmarks from any computing, mobile, or other device with access to the Internet. Social bookmarking websites provide for and sustain online environments wherein groups of web-based bookmarking users can share and utilize each other's bookmarks.
In response to the vast commercial profit and social networking potential created by publicly sharing large numbers of private web-based bookmarks, the Internet has seen the rapid growth of social bookmarking websites in recent years. These websites typically: allow free membership via a registration process, require username and password access, provide for customizable member profile pages, and provide the opportunity to download a graphical user interface (GUI) site access program. This program is typically downloaded into a user's web browser, referred to in the art as downloading a “toolbar” or “plug in” and greatly facilitates bookmark creation and management.
Social bookmarking websites have experienced rapid growth primarily by allowing the assignment of subjective keywords by users to describe and classify their public bookmarks, known in the art as “tagging”. Without the tagging system, a social bookmark site would simply consist of an enormous database of random URLs that would be difficult to browse or utilize for any effective purpose. By utilizing tagging, these websites can allow members to search and extract publicly stored bookmarks using keywords of interest to them; members can also create effective social networks by using inference and judgment to assess the personality of other members by inspecting another member's choice of bookmarks, tag usage and profile page. Specific examples of social bookmarking websites successfully using the tagging system include delicious.com and stumbleupon.com; many of those skilled in the arts believe a major transformation is possibly underway wherein the search algorithm methodologies, which have transformed the utility of the Internet in dramatic fashion, could soon be eclipsed by the metadata methodologies exemplified by social bookmarks.
Tagging systems produce new data (subjectively assigned keywords, votes in favor or against, etc.), or “metadata”, about existing data (web resources) and collectively comes to be known in the art as a “folksonomy”. Metadata and resultant folksonomy are key drivers in the continued growth of social bookmarking sites: as their members continue to exploit the entertainment, networking, discovery, and text query search facility of this metadata, the sites themselves reap economic benefits from the increase in Internet traffic and rankings derived from their growing base of members and the vast quantities of links to and from their sites. The elemental data used to create current metadata is based on the subjective and creative process of users attaching individually chosen keywords to their bookmarks. For example, 100 users bookmarking a particular web page containing a news article about Wall Street may literally assign 100 or more different keywords to the same article.
Current processes enabling creation and usage of metadata are rich with benefits, opportunities, and challenges. Many of these were discussed in detail at The 16th International World Wide Web Conference in Alberta, Canada in 2007, and subsequently published in an article titled The Complex Dynamics of Collaborative Tagging. The current invention addresses deficiencies of the art within current metadata construction and provides systems and methods for the transformation of articles employed in said construction.